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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26593039">Sailboats</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/toldthestars/pseuds/toldthestars'>toldthestars</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Supernatural</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 02:42:26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,912</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26593039</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/toldthestars/pseuds/toldthestars</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The Winchester men, memories, and Mother's Days.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Sailboats</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Dean thinks, if he tries hard enough, he can remember. He vaguely remembers pancakes a little too dark on the outside and a little runny on the inside. There’s a construction-paper card. He remembers her smiling and laughing but it’s the sort of memory that you think maybe you dreamt up and are holding on to too hard. But he’s almost certain that these few wisps of memory are real – he remembers that Sam had come home for the first time just a few days before, 1983. He’s almost positive that he put Sam’s name on the Mother’s Day card for him. </p><p>Sam and Dean didn’t talk about Mary growing up. John never said don’t, but Dean understood it well enough. There was no space for it--the grief and pain that took her place was too big, too dark. Nothing else fit. </p><p>And yet, this time of year would roll around. As he got older, Dean would talk with rolling eyes about how Hallmark loved to milk every cent out of sentimental civilians who had the leisure time for things like Mimosas and scented soaps. When Dean thinks about him and Sam and those first few years after Mom—all he remembers is tearing around Bobby’s junkyard and waiting impatiently for Sam to get big enough to wrestle and to stop being so boring. It was as though they had left time behind at Bobby’s: Dean doesn’t remember holidays, he doesn’t recall birthdays, nothing that marked the passage of time. He thinks maybe there was cake and a gift or two along the way, but he simply can’t remember what it was like. What he does know is that, too quickly, Sam got big enough that John deemed it okay to take them out on the road. </p><p>There’s a scene in Dean’s head, clear as day. He’s walking through one of those fill-up joints, eyeballing the chocolate bars. He sees a racks with all kinds of cheap greeting cards and tourist-y postcards. He sees one with big pink roses on it, and blue scrawling script that says, “Happy Mother’s Day.” He has a moment of panic, thinking to himself that he’d forgotten, and he didn’t get anything for her. Somewhere in his kid-mind he knows, he understands, that he’ll never have to fold construction paper into another card or try not to burn another breakfast-in-bed, but he still hates that he’s empty handed. He picks up the card. Dean has no money, so he thinks—for a second—about stealing it. He hears the bell announcing that someone’s just strode through the door, and when he looks up, he sees his Dad. Dean crams the card back in the rack. He fights the urge to run back to the car and dive into the Impala. He walks past his Dad, who gives him a little nod as he pays the man at the counter. </p><p>Dean remembers that this is when it started. They drove through probably a hundred miles of quiet, a Zepplin album playing lower than usual. Sam was in the back seat, passed out and drooling. Dean wasn’t even thinking about how he was gonna make fun of Sam when he woke up. </p><p>“Hey Dean,” John said suddenly, but in that low and easy voice he sometimes had, “You remember which way your Mom used to cut your sandwiches for you?” </p><p>Dean feels that moment of panic again. Was this a test? Was Dad gonna be mad when Dean got it wrong? </p><p>John didn’t wait long to answer his own question, “She’d always do them diagonal. She said they looked like—“ </p><p>“—like sailboats. Sailboat sandwiches!” Dean exclaimed. He felt immediately embarrassed for his rush of excitement, but glanced over to see a small smile on John’s face. </p><p>They spent the entire ride with John asking “Do you remember,” and rebuilding memories. </p><p>The next day John was gone, and he didn’t come back for days. </p><p>And so it went on. Every year on or around Mother’s Day, John would ask Dean and Sam, “Do you remember?”, and a few stories would get told. Usually they were the same ones, but they all played their part in making a to-do over recalling details that by now were burned into their minds. It was the one day Mary could be alive. And then John would disappear for a few days, sometimes a week. As though he had could only bear to remember her for so long before he needed to retreat back into the hunt.</p><p>/</p><p>John had been dead for shy of a year. Some of the harshest, cruelest sting of it had ebbed away for Dean, but he still felt like was full of ashes on the inside. He was so worried about Sam and the signs that most of the time Dean didn’t know what day it was. But he was aware of the second Sunday of May in 2010. </p><p>He was driving with Sam, and from the way Sam was looking at him, Sam remembered what day it was too. It might have been odd that Zepplin was playing, but there were still about five tapes in the Impala’s music collection so it was less divine than one might think. After being quiet for most of the day, Sam turned slightly to Dean. “Hey, uh—Dean. Do you—do you remember Dad’s story about that time that—“ </p><p>“Sam,” Dean said. “Don’t.”</p><p>Sam was quiet again for a minute. </p><p>“He’s gone,” Sam said, his voice just a little thicker than before. “So we don’t get to talk about her either anymore?”</p><p>Dean had a sudden flash of wanting to punch Sam in the face. But he couldn’t do that just because Sam was right, so instead he shut up and took a breath. Then he said, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. It’s just that I haven’t gotten the hang of to this whole orphan thing yet, you know? It’s a hard knock life, Annie.” </p><p>Sam’s lips quirked for a minute. “Yeah, well. The sun’ll come out tomorrow, so, there’s that.” </p><p>“You are so a red-headed woman.” </p><p>And so it went. And the following year, when Sam brought up the time that John took Mary for a romantic boat ride during the dry season and they both ended up dragging a canoe for five miles down a too-shallow river, Dean laughed hard enough to almost choke on a French fry. He felt pretty certain that they weren’t getting all the details right, but he sure as hell enjoyed the stories. </p><p>/</p><p>After Dean came back from Hell, they stopped celebrating Mother’s Day. </p><p>For seven years, Dean would note the passage of the second Sunday in May by saying something that other folks might call a prayer in his mind to her. He spared a moment or two for John, too, because Mother’s Day was as much about his Dad’s love for Mary as it was about his. </p><p>On May 9th, 2016, Dean padded into the Hall of the bunker he shared with Sam and was unsurprised to find his brother at his laptop, glued to the screen’s dull glow. He briefly checked over Sam’s shoulder, in case his brother’s taste in porn had finally improved from that vanilla stuff he watched from behind his clutched pearls. He almost fell backwards when he realized what he was looking at instead. </p><p>“Is that—Mom?” Dean asked. </p><p> “Yeah. What were you expecting?” Sam asked knowingly. </p><p>“Uh. That’s not important. Where did you get that?” </p><p>Sam clicked through a few more photos in the slideshow—most seemed to be of John and Mary, young and in love. There was one Dean recognized—of the four of them, Sam just a little wrinkled prune of a human, Dean young and laughing, and John and Mary smiling and proud. </p><p>“You remember those years ago when we cleaned out Dad’s storage units? Remember we found those pictures?” </p><p>“Yeah, but I thought those were long gone.” </p><p>“Nah, I scanned ‘em all and saved them. I didn’t want them to get lost again.” </p><p>“You didn’t tell me,” Dean says, sinking into a chair next to his brother, his eyes still on Mary’s face. He remembered younger Mary, who was strong, and smart, and brave. The woman who was more than a match for John Winchester. His mother. </p><p>“I don’t know why I didn’t,” Sam shrugged. “I guess I didn’t think we’d…ya know…talk about her, anymore.” </p><p>Dean quirked his head. “Why would you think that?” </p><p>Sam seemed to be doing that thing where he got smaller. It never failed to amaze Dean how this six-foot-a-million dude could become a child in front of his eyes. “I dunno, I guess I always figured that was more of a you-and-Dad thing.” </p><p>“Sammy—“ </p><p>“You guys always talked about the things you remembered, Dean. It’s okay, I’m not…mad, or anything, just I don’t remember the way that you guys did. I don’t remember her. At all.”<br/>“But we have the stories. We always talked about those old times.”</p><p>“Yeah, I know. And that’s always been great….but I can’t share those memories, not really, you know? I mean, I know you don’t remember that much either, but I’ve got….nothing. I don’t remember the ice-skating trip or the camp-out in the backyard or the sailboat sandwiches. All my life…” Sam trailed off. </p><p>“All your life, what, Sammy?” Dean watched his brother, and already felt in his chest what his brother was trying to put into words. </p><p>“All my life, I feel like I’ve loved a ghost. I love her because I know she was my mom—of course I love her, but there’s nothing there, you know?” Sam coughed a little into his fist; didn’t quite look back at Dean. “I told those stories with you and Dad, but…there’s only ever been a hole there for me, where she belonged.” </p><p>For a moment, Dean acknowledged that there was really nothing to be said to his little brother. Not, ‘I understand, I miss her too,’ or ‘I lost my mom too, you know.’ Their sorrow overlapped to be sure, but the shapes were still simply different.</p><p>“She loved you, you know,” Dean said. </p><p>“I know, Dean,” Sam said, with a sad smile. </p><p>“No, Sam, man, she loved you. I remember. I remember how she looked when she came home with you.” </p><p>Sam glanced over at Dean. “You do?” </p><p>Dean nodded. “Man, she was freaking glowing. She was lit up from the inside. And I remember thinking, what could make Mom look that happy? Did she win the lotto? Are we going to Disney land? And she showed you to me. I mean, I thought you looked like a foot, but whatever, she looked like you were the entire world.” </p><p>Sam’s smile wavered for a moment, but held. He looked at the picture of Mary, softly radiating from the computer screen. “You thought I looked like a foot?”</p><p>“I still think you look like a foot.” </p><p>Dean accepted the punch on the arm for what it was. He and Sam looked at a few more pictures together. After a while, Dean went to the kitchen to make them sandwiches. He paused for a minute, putting both hands on the counter to support himself. He closed his eyes. We still love you. We’ll always love you. </p><p>Dean cut the sandwiches, piled four diagonal halves onto a plate, and brought them out to where Sam was waiting.</p>
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